Hey everyone!
So this blog is primarily for friends and family to keep up to date with my travels, I figured it made sense to tell you all what my actual plan is for those who don't know.
After almost 6 years of studying Kathak under Anuradha Chaturvedi and over 2 years studying Bharatanatyam under Ananya Chatterjee, I have decided to take my dance training further and go to India to study at the same schools my Gurus here learnt at. I leave on Sunday and am planning to stay for 7 months.
I'm going to Kolkata first and I plan to stay about 5 months. Kolkata is the capital city of the state of West Bengal and is India's third largest city. I'm going to study Bharatanatyam at Kalamandalam Kolkata, the school is a branch of an older institution in Kerala. I shall be studying under the guidance of Smt. Thankamani Kutty, a renowned and highly respected exponent of Bharatanatyam and Mohiniyattam.
The last 2 months of my India trip I am planning to spend in Lucknow, the capital city of the state of Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow is known for having been the cultural capital of the Nawabs. I'm going to study at Kathak Academy Lucknow under the guidance of Guru Anuj Mishra, the son of Pt. Arjun Mishra, a renowned exponent of Kathak.
So where am I living for 7 months? Well Kalamandalam Kolkata have recently finished building a brand new student accomodation block, so I am staying there in Kolkata. In Lucknow I am staying at my teacher's house, as many foreign students before me have done. What's the language situation? If you know me you'll know languages are a major passion of mine. The language of Kolkata is Bengali, a language I have totally fallen in love with. I have managed to learn a few phrases, you know the simple stuff; hello, how are you?, pleased to meet you! and of course can you lower the price? But generally speaking I am hoping to pick up as much Bengali as possible when in Kolkata. The languages of Lucknow are Hindi and Urdu. Both languages are the same at a colloquial spoken level. Lucknow is in fact supposed to be where you can hear the purest Hindi and Urdu spoken. Having grown up with Bollywood and an Urdu-speaking Grandfather I can actually speak a fair bit of Hindi and Urdu, enough to get by. The hope is of course to improve my Hindi/Urdu when in India. India is a country with over 25 main languages so naturally there are languages that act as lingua francas and these happen to generally be Hindi and English luckily for me!
Along this amazing journey I'm hoping to be able to travel a little. Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh are all neighbouring countries of India and are not too hard to reach, so I might be able to visit them in amongst training. I'd also like to get to Amritsar to go to the Golden Temple and since I'll be passing through Delhi twice to fly I feel I should make the effort to take in at least some of the city!
So there isn't a lot more I can say now. Next time I write to you all I should hopefully be in Kolkata, India!
Until then!
No comments:
Post a Comment